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A City on a Rock

Style of Goya Spanish
Not on view
This nightmarish vision of a city encircled by violence, its sky populated by mysterious flying creatures, was believed to be by Goya when it was purchased by an American collector in Spain in the 1880s. Today, it is thought to be by one of Goya’s emulators. The artist has exaggerated Goya’s rugged paint handling and made a pastiche of many of his motifs. The winged figures are taken from a print in Goya’s Disparates (translated as “Follies” or “Irrationalities”) series, while the apocalyptic landscape recalls Goya’s so-called Black Paintings, which had been little known in his lifetime but grew in fame over the nineteenth century.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: A City on a Rock
  • Artist: Style of Goya (Spanish, 19th century)
  • Medium: Oil on canvas
  • Dimensions: 33 × 41 in. (83.8 × 104.1 cm)
  • Classification: Paintings
  • Credit Line: H. O. Havemeyer Collection, Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929
  • Object Number: 29.100.12
  • Curatorial Department: European Paintings

More Artwork

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Don Bernardo de Iriarte (1735–1814), Goya Spanish, Oil on canvas
Don Bernardo de Iriarte (1735–1814)
Copy after Goya
Seated Giant, Goya (Francisco de Goya y Lucientes) Spanish, Burnished aquatint, scaper, roulette, lavis (along the top of the landscape and within the landscape)
Seated Giant
Goya (Francisco de Goya y Lucientes)
by 1818 (possibly 1814–18)
Self-Portrait with Two Pupils, Marie Gabrielle Capet (1761–1818) and Marie Marguerite Carraux de Rosemond (1765–1788), Adélaïde Labille-Guiard French, Oil on canvas
Self-Portrait with Two Pupils, Marie Gabrielle Capet (1761–1818) and Marie Marguerite Carraux de Rosemond (1765–1788)
Adélaïde Labille-Guiard
1785
María Luisa of Parma (1751–1819), Queen of Spain, Goya Spanish, Oil on canvas
María Luisa of Parma (1751–1819), Queen of Spain
Copy after Goya
Self-Portrait, Goya (Francisco de Goya y Lucientes) Spanish, Brush and point of brush, carbon black ink
Self-Portrait
Draftsman Goya (Francisco de Goya y Lucientes)
Sitter Goya (Francisco de Goya y Lucientes)
ca. 1796

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